072: Paulette Boudreaux: Express Yourself Through Each Chapter of Life
Ever Better Today
English - June 09, 2017 07:00 - 49 minutes - 46.5 MB - ★★★★★ - 65 ratingsCareers Business Entrepreneurship Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Paulette Boudreaux shared her inspiring life story during a panel discussion at the Association of Writers & Writing Program (AWP) Conference, in February 2017. The panel, Second Blooming: Women Authors Debuting After Fifty, attracted a standing-room only crowd, and I was fortunate to be in the audience. As Paulette and other writers told their stories, it seemed that a sisterhood was being formed and the audience became an extended part of the panel. We bonded through cheers, laughter, and gasps of exasperated recognition when an author described how she persevered through yet another indignity or insult.
Paulette joined me on the podcast to share just some of the fascinating experiences that she taps into when writing her southern-based fiction. She says that despite living on the West Coast most of her life, her inner monologue has a Southern drawl.
During out discussion, Paulette describes moving from Mississippi to San Francisco in 1970 in the midst of a school desegregation movement and how that impacted her. She shares the multi-decade journey that led to her groundbreaking novel, Mulberry, being published by Carolina Wren Press in October 2015. Her experiences include working as a journalist, a public relations professional, an English professor, and earning her Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree all while raising her daughter as a single mother.
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Key Takeaways:
[7:00] Paulette’s novel, Mulberry, started as a short story.
[11:58] After winning a contest through Carolina Wren Press, Paulette’s novel was published.
[17:11] Most human beings have a need to express in some way.
[22:25] Paulette’s interior reality is Mississippi.
[28:10] For better or worse, Paulette finished her high school education in the desegregated schools of San Francisco.
[39:55] The Second Blooming Panel was an acknowledgment that women are not done when their children are out of the house.
[49:53] Paulette’s advice for writers who have stories to tell.
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